How to Find the Energy to Get Out Of Bed In the Morning.

Peppy people used to piss me off.  The ones that bounce out of bed, zip through the day, have energy in the evenings…you know, the ones you want to shoot on sight just because their sound waves make your ears hurt?

There’s just not so many of them around any more.  It’s not only anchored authors that seem to be ground into the dirty by impossible schedules these days.  Three days ago, my daughter collapsed at high school after climbing a flight of stairs, too lethargic to go any further–a genuine physical example of lack of energy at its worst.  She’s only 17, when one’s energy is supposedly at its peak.

I touched on this inability to get out of bed the other day.  Surprisingly, a lot of people think they lack self-discipline when actually, what they lack is a decent diet.  No, it’s not even about exercise – just diet.

Unfortunately, this subject is peppered with landmines.  You can’t have a conversation about diets, because everyone is an expert, loaded to the jawline with everything they’ve ever heard from every media outlet, guru, starlet, get-rich-quick-author, Harvard doctor, exercise star, journalist, soapstar, magazine…. Well, you get the idea.  Everyone knows what works, and rushes to write a book about it.

But I’m not here to tell you how to lose weight.  So let’s shovel the twenty megatons of diet-related bullshit to one side and clear the table.

What I’m telling you now is what I’ve observed directly from my daughter’s experience this last week past, and my own personal experience in February.  I thought mine was an oddity.  My daughter’s experience puts it into the “okay, this is a normal reaction, then” bracket.

I lay it out for you to consider, because of all sub-categories of the human species, anchored authors are most in need of the ability to drag their butts out of bed every morning, and if I’m right, this will do it for you…with energy to spare.

Interested?

I’ve already told you the solution:  A decent diet.  It’s the definition of a “decent diet” upon which this all hinges.  Where most people fall down is:

• Too much crappy (high fat) protein
• Not enough good quality protein.
• Not nearly enough fruits and vegies
• Waaaaay too much fat (of the wrong kind, to boot)
• Too many starchy carbs
• Far, far, far too much sugar.

You’re probably thinking it’s the over eating, the excessive sugar, and starchy carbs that you eat to make yourself feel good, that are responsible for making you feel like crap in the morning, and unable to haul your butt out of bed.

Actually, it’s the lack of good quality protein.  Surprise.

I’ve been following a vegan diet for nearly a year.  I began as a raw foodist – so did my daughter — but neither of us could keep up the diet in a household with three flesh-eaters (all men).  I retreated to veganism, and my daughter to more conventional vegetarianism.   But because I was new to the lifestyle, I didn’t have good control over my protein intake.  I was getting some protein (I’m not thatstupid),  but apparently, it wasn’t quite enough, and the energy levels just trickled away over the weeks.  After a few weeks, I found my energy was in the basement.  I could barely get out of bed in the morning.  I got dizzy after climbing stairs, and life in general just sucked.  A grizzly bear just out of hibernation was better company.

In February, as I started putting my life back on track after the big derailment, one of the things I decided to do was go back to the gym and lift weights.  A virtual commandment in the weight training room is that one must supplement one’s diet with extra protein.  As a vegan, that meant soy protein, so I automatically began taking an extra 15 grams of soy protein three times a day.

Within five days, the difference in my energy levels was like night and day.  I shrugged and figured it was the gym that was the difference – I mean, the media blitz-bomb us with “Exercise! Exercise!” right?

Fast-forward to a few days ago, and my daughter’s collapse at school.  When she said she was climbing stairs and got dizzy and just couldn’t climb any further, I realized what was going on.  I asked her twenty questions, including whether she was having trouble getting out of bed in the morning.  I already knew life sucked for her right now – I’d been listening to her belly-aching in the evenings for the last few weeks, and marvelling over the shitty run of luck she seemed to be going through…and it suddenly all fell into place with an almost audible click.

So I sat down and wrote out a basic diet for her, including 15 grams of soy protein three times a day, lots of fruit and vegies, and for her, sprouted grain toast and beans for breakfast in the morning.  She can have anything else she likes during the day (teenagers can inhale enormous amounts of calories and shrug them off), as long as she eats at least what is on this list).  She was more than happy to promise to try this for five days because she felt so crappy.

By day three she was bouncing off the ceilings, her cheeks were rosy, she was laughing, cheerful, and totally comitted to eating this basic diet for the rest of her life.  The change, again, was night and day.  I was amazed at the difference myself.  But Kate doesn’t work out.  The only difference for her was the diet.  She was already eating lots of fruits and vegies.  The soy protein supplement was the big change.

For flesh-eaters, good-quality protein is easier and cheaper to come by.  The danger is eating too much saturated fat with your protein.  Even chicken carries a little too much of it, so you have to work to find a careful balance.  Of course, there’s no reason why you can’t use protein supplements like the weight trainers use.  There’s whey protein supplements, extracted from normal dairy products, if soy is just too out there for you (although 40+ woman might want to consider using soy anyway – soy has very strong cancer-fighting properties for women).

The actual amount of protein you need each day is beyond the scope of this post – there’s a dozen different variables that affect that number.  But there’s a good calculator here, on the Body Building site (actually, the whole site is a marvellous resource, if you’re new to the whole idea of balanced eating and exercise).  Use the “stressed” category and plug in your statistics to arrive at an optimum number of grams of protein you should be consuming each day.  Again, I emphasise, this should be good quality protein.  Not porterhouse steaks or burgers from the local golden arches.

If you can reach that number more days than not, you should see a difference in your energy levels.

The rest of your diet will also have an effect.

• Keep your sugar levels low to zero
• Your starchy carbs low to zero
• Your fruits and vegies high

I realize that for most people, these are major lifestyle changes, that can’t happen overnight.  But if you’re sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, then decide to do something about it.

Do it for your writing career.

First appeared on Anchored Authors in April/May, 2009

____________

Tracy Cooper-Posey © 2009. Cannot be copied or distributed without permission.